


except the horizon, no one knows

by yordle



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Affection, Angst, Angst and Feels, Colors, Denial of Feelings, Desire, Dinner, Dreams and Nightmares, Falling In Love, Inner Dialogue, Introspection, Love, M/M, Nightmares, Pining, Referenced cannibalism, Romance, Sleep Deprivation, a whole forest of pines actually, they're finally talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22765594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yordle/pseuds/yordle
Summary: His heart, some long word at the heart.Tender passion, Cupid’s joyous darts, a quickening of the pulse, a sweet despair.Frisson. Quel est ce sentiment?All the descriptors that can never measure up to a single, old word.Can he love?
Relationships: Alastor/Husk (Hazbin Hotel)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 128





	1. the view from halfway down

**Author's Note:**

>   
> "除却天边月，没人知" - 韦庄《女冠子》  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dinners and nightmares

_2017_

Consider for a moment, what this concept of love truly is. A singular word that encompasses all the feelings of affection, adoration, admiration. It’s a jack of all trades. All the heart-throbbing backstories, tangled messes, and consequential dissolution. 

We have but one lonely word for such a disarray of emotions, _love._ Let us delve deeper into this vagrant language of synonyms. Red, like his pinstripe fabric. Red as blood, a dying algae bloom, a freshly picked rose. A thousand other descriptions: cardinal, crimson, maroon, the wine sitting before him.

It’s raining outside. A million red rubies striking down on tinted glass. _Interference._ Radio waves don’t travel well in the water. A quiet static thrums throughout the room.

Alastor doesn’t notice, Husk doesn’t care.

We know the words for rain. Downpour, drizzle, precipitation. Every shade that passes in our view, aquamarine, indigo, scarlet. These are the blues, purples, reds, of everyday. Names for every color that can be found and then more. And somehow, in the entirety of our language, there are more words for color and rain than there are for this beating heart. _Love._

His heart, some long word at the heart.

Tender passion, Cupid’s joyous arrows, a quickening of the pulse, a sweet despair. _Frisson. Quel est ce sentiment?_ All the descriptors that can never measure up to a single, old word. 

_Can he love?_

The question has troubled him every sleepless night, following around every wrinkled sheet and rocking chair. There is no definitive reply, no simple one-word answer like a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Reach into a sealed bag, pull out the truth. Is it red like an heirloom apple, or maybe blue like a hauyne gem?

Gray. Bleak, discolored, empty. A monotone filter that covers his eyes. He’s never seen the world in anything else, never felt this word of _love._ All of the colors he hasn’t seen, all the words he hasn’t felt.

Perhaps all of love are merely symbols, hints to a future diverging on myriad paths. Vagabond messages scribbled onto wood posts and checkered stones along a road traveled by many. By chance, do you know where these weary adventurers have gone?

Perhaps this sadness that so often falls between the two springs from the disappointment of a search characterized by unforgiving uncertainty. A level of distrust between himself and the surroundings. It’s hidden in the legs of a table cluttered by jambalaya and Merlot wine, hidden in an unused bed riddled with sanguine sheets, hidden in the night-colored coat Husk adorns.

Husk with those sunset eyes and ash-colored fur and ruby-tinted wings. He’s a creature of sin and gratification. The other, opposite. 

Alastor is a creature of pattern, indulgence in the slightest. Yet in these late night moments, he wishes to feel the sensation of fabric on fur, electrical discharge sending infinite shudders down his spine. Feel it in an empty bed and stare into a set of honey eyes.

He doesn’t, he never does.

Husk is staring straight at him. Some nights, Alastor thinks he can almost find his own reflection in those drunken eyes. Embed the view into his eyelids, keep it inside. 

“Why don’t you sleep?”

The situation has become commonplace. A small wooden table squirreled away in the corner of a dining room, illuminated by a single candle between the two. Wilting, it’s been burning for hours. They sit in the half dark. It’s hard to see Husk’s outline against the flickering light, brushing his face the way a lover’s hand might. _The way his hand could._

The food, like always, has been jambalaya. Accompanied with a fine red wine chosen from Alastor’s personal collection. The taste of garlic still dances on his tongue, a holy trinity with andouille sausage and freshly caught crayfish. Focus on the taste, focus on the light, on anything except the question.

“Reasons.”

He breathes in and shifts his focus ever forward to the cat. His lips are stiff, forever curled. His eyes don’t close, forever open.

_Can you read through his smile, his gaze?_

“Yeah, yeah, the same damn answer every time. Gimme a reason then.” His voice is gruff, no fucks given.

You can’t run from a nightmare. It follows, shifts, morphing into some unknown entity that threatens to wreak havoc on an unconscious mind. It’s always something just at his heels. Sinister, fanged, tearing away the edges of a dream, forever present. Every time those scarlet eyes close, it draws ever closer, stalking.

“Simply don’t see a point, my dear. What if some demon were to sneak up on poor, unsuspecting, me? That’d be quite the situation, now wouldn’t it.” _Half-truth._

He hopes to catch Husk in a bedroom for half a night.

He wishes he could tone down half these feelings.

Nightmares always. There’s been not a single night without nightmares, eating away through twisted corridors and resounding scratches. The last time he’s slept? 1973, sometime in the deep winter.

Winter in Hell has intrusive fingers, creeping into a building through every nook and cranny. You can find those bony lengths under every pane of glass or lingering on every golden doorknob. In his veins, his soul, shivering down his spine. 

He’d left the window open, inviting the chill into the deepest recesses of his body. He’d left the bottle of wine still on a table, dirtied dishes still in the sink. He’d left his thoughts in a deal made that night, with a sad alcoholic character freshly arrived. _Entertainment, is what he thought._ Longing, is what he found.

He’d dreamt of the fields, large and devoid of life, nothing but rotting grass filling the expanses. A void in the chasm of his mind. Yet he still felt something watching. Something with sharp claws that tip-tapped with every step. An open mouth and dripping saliva and cutting fangs. _Only a dream._

But in Hell, what is the difference between dream and reality? It could shift in an instant, waking up to find that same something at the foot of his bed. It’s the feeling of something that could be. That if he were to be caught, then there might be no waking moment.

_Tired._ He breathes in the smell of dying chlorophyll, decaying corpses of budding sprouts. He is still being watched. Be careful of those golden eyes. As beautiful as a sunset, as indulgent as _sauvignon blanc._

“Y’know...I’d be willing to watch over if you wanted.” Glistening claws pick up an almost empty glass. _Protective, but not intrusive._ “In case, anything happens.” 

Alastor fusses with the collar of his jacket, sleeves the subtle shade of Husk’s wings. Flaming, colors that could ravage his soul. _Such a contrast,_ he thinks. Catch the two stuck in the intangible space of Alastor’s dining room. One foot inside the house, one foot outside the bedroom. He sips from the wine glass, leaning forward in a slight haze, eyes peering through the windows to a soul. 

Sometimes, he’ll lean in a tad too far, find himself on the edge of a trichromatic experience. Did you know cats are thought to view the world in three colors? What would Alastor see through those lenses?

_Please._ “Don’t you worry about it, Husker.” The light flashes in front of him, decay of a red tide bloom. “Frankly, I’m not too enthusiastic about the idea of sleep. A waste of time, if you ask me.”

In the constancy of his damnation in Hell, Husk is the only fickle variable, ever changing. Husk, with his derisive attitude and mischievous mouth, everything he appreciates. The waves that crash on his beach, the big bang that jump-started his universe, his heart.

“I suppose.”

He watches Husk tilt back the drink, yellow heart teasing over the edge. A painting of unfiltered dejection. Perhaps they’re each straining against and beyond the other, grasping an infinitesimally small piece of a shadow that always turns the corner a step or two ahead of either.

Alastor inhales the void hidden in that fur, the feeling he would _love_ of static electricity. The top hat he’s never seen Husk without, _what’s under there?_ That Zellandine smile, worlds and circumstances separating the sensation of it on his lips.

Perchance, Alastor thinks, he should bargain with sleep for some time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RuffianBC drew some absolutely amazing fanart for an excerpt from the first chapter  
> please make sure to check her out [here](https://ruffianbc.tumblr.com/post/612785575122092032/illustration)
> 
>   
> 
> 
> _Frisson. Quel est ce sentiment?_ \- Thrill. What is this feeling? 


	2. cut is the branch that might have grown full straight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> science and colors galore

_2004_

Some say that if you were to take every single word in our language and mix it up, you would fasten every story that has ever been told and will be told in the future. So pray tell, is a story not simply a blended cacophony of words? If so, then what is the difference between a story of ‘I am’ or ‘Oh, Mephistopheles’ than the predicament these two are in? 

It goes something like this.

“You _are_ a cat, correct?”

“Yes, I’m a fucking cat, what’s it to ya.”

“Tell me about the colors you see.”

 _Colors._ _Infinite shades that pass through rose-tinted eyes._

“Why do you want to know about colors?”

It’s another one of Alastor’s late obsessions. Born with the likes of _why am I down here_ and _do you know how you look?_ The first question is easy to answer. The second, not so much.

“I’m glad you asked, dear Husker. You see, I was speaking with this acquaintance of mine, quite the inventor actually, and he showed me this wonderful little contraption.”

He brandishes a glass prism. Edges cut with fine precision, refractory crystals shining under the dim light of the tavern. 

Catch the way Husk’s view widens ever so slightly at the colors. Gilded eyes, hidden behind a cynical gaze. His fur is a dichotomy of black and white. Dark as the night, something distantly flung out. White as the stars, burning with an ever increasing warmth.

“What if I don’t want to.”

Ever the gambler. _Who refuses the Radio Demon, after all?_

“I’m certain I can make it worth your while,” and Alastor snaps. There’s a glass of alcohol on the wooden table, condensation dripping off the sides with the warmth of the bar. The drink has the same turmeric quality as Husk.

_Focus on the colors._

Agreement.

“Well, to put it simply, look at the light in this room. It’s all yellow and white and shit right? But if you break it down into these tiny tiny pieces, they’re actually all different. You can’t touch it, but these things look like waves. Y’know, the ones on a beach kind of.”

“Interesting.”

“Anyways, these waves come in all these different sizes. Some of ‘em are so long and so short you can’t even see them.”

Husk tilts back the glass, eyes closed as if to savor the taste of cheap booze. _I could provide so much more,_ Alastor catches himself thinking. Black catches in the light, pale reflections of well groomed fur. 

“So what does that have to do with colors?”  
  
“Calm down will you, I’m gettin’ there. So all this yellow and red shit.” Husk gestures towards the nothing in the air, “is all just different lengths of these waves. And when it passes through that thing of yours, it’s called a prism by the way, the waves are split and you get all those different colors.”

“Oh, do tell me more.” He doesn’t truly care about the science behind it all.

“Outta all the colors you can see, red’s the longest and purple’s the shortest. There’s some other shit about energy and whatever, but I never bothered to learn it. Got too busy shootin’ folks and dying.” 

The original point of the conversation has long been lost, some question of _what colors do you see_ left wandering. 

“How exactly does this _prism_ do that?” The sound is foreign, mouth shaping distastefully at the word.

“Fuck if I know, never got to learn.” Another drink.

“So they travel differently? I mean, they are different lengths, correct?” 

“Technically, no. But when it goes through that prism, red light travels the fastest. It’ll come in all the same, but in less time than you could possibly imagine, _boom_ -” The light glistens off Husk’s claws, mimicking a bloom of color “-it’ll split.”

Alastor hates being wrong. But maybe, in this old-time tavern with his hands folded neatly in his lap, he’s willing to let it go.

He turns the whole of his body to look at Husk. Knees bent at a perfect acute angle, shoulders slightly sagged under the weight of drinking, eyes half-lidded. The words float in and out of his ear, registering only thoughts of _red, fastest,_ and _split._

Husk is a modern representation of old age, a dated inscription on sleek stone, the Lapis Niger of his damnation. All the angles and messy scribbles and sharp-edged tongue plastered onto dark stone. Black, the color of his fur. _Black, where is the color black in a prism?_

“I see,” and he hums contentedly. “And if I may ask, where did you acquire this knowledge? Surely someone of your profession didn’t require the study of science.”

“Yeah, well you learn a lot in the army. Everyone’s from somewhere, and we’re all just lookin’ for someone to listen to our story.” 

The conversation lapses into silence.

Sometimes, stories don’t need to have words. They can be just as meaningful with side eyed glances and the void of speech. It takes the place of wings cut a little too close to a collarbone, a knee situated uncomfortably in the corner of a right angle, _a heart laid too close to a smile._

He still doesn’t understand colors, but the contrast is ever present. Red on black on white, only one of those comes out the end of his glass.

“Give me a few years and some books, maybe I’ll figure it out for your dumb ass.”

For all its improper grammar and profanity, the sentence is carefully crafted, devised in the half drunken state of its owner. Soft, in its own rudimentary and primitive way. Husk shrugs, looks at a dying candle. Drinks from his glass.

“I’d like that.” It’s faint, practically breathed into the cramped emptiness between them.

In the spaces, there’s still these thoughts of _why do I feel like this? Why does my breath catch at the sensation of your name? Why do these colors come alive at your voice?_

He wants to ignore it. Breathes in. The smell of a sticky table, burning candles, nouveau wine. Colors form in the back of his head, brown, yellow, red, echoing off of glass. _What is a prism but a reflection of colors, feelings?_ His mind, perhaps.

_Tell me why you are different. Why, out of all these loathsome sinners, you are the one color with a wavelength too short to see?_

_(Perhaps he was listening after all)._

He shifts closer. _Why can I remember every offhanded touch and pensive stare? Why do the years feel so short when you’re here and so long when you’ve gone? Is it damnation? Is it me?_

The two came in through the same door.

_Drunk._

The night has felt more like an instant than a conversation.

Alastor is the first to leave the tavern door. 

_(Terminat hora diem)._

He doesn’t look back as he walks out, a cut of dark coattails disappearing behind the frame. That jumbled mess of efflorescent red hair, the tailored ensemble of red upon red upon red. It’s the first thing to leave the bar.

Red is the last thing in his mind, lost in the night through nimble, clawed hands.

_(Can you see the story now?)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is taken from _Doctor Faustus_ by Christopher Marlowe bc i just finished reading it and that line stuck.
> 
>  _Terminat hora diem_ \- The hour finishes the day
> 
> might be the last thing for a while bc i gotta figure out how to clean up my mess of writing


	3. your thorns are the best part of you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> letters really are wretched, aren't they

_1989_

Let’s piece together a story starting with the invention of writing. Bamboo tablets, pictorial signs, dancing on pottery, independently invented throughout all regions. Thousands of years recorded and left forever. The ghost of someone’s voice breathing life into a story here or there, pencil scribbles or hammered clay doesn’t matter. Echoes thoughts in a borrowed medium; writing is for the times where one finds it difficult to use a voice. 

Alastor tries to find his voice, fingers the little threads coming undone at the end of sleeves. Looks at the letter without blinking, etched like stars forever moving in the sky. _Redshift,_ is what Husk would have called it. Hands try to gesticulate, airs out ideas, all of the muted arpeggios coming from his soundboard. 

Why don’t we skip ahead, twist and turn another thread of his carmine arabesque.

_Alastor,_

_I haven’t seen you since you left. And as much as I tried not to, I still found a way to give a shit about you. That jacket, your damn microphone, your hair, your eyes; it’s all just a fucked up blur of red in my head._

_Do you sleep? Or are you still not over the nightmares? I would watch over you if you wanted. There’s been changes in your tower. I started a garden, as fucked up as it may sound. A rose grew, and I thought you might like it, since you’re from Louisiana and everything._

_If anyone asks, I didn’t do shit for you._

Alastor glances up, blinks. Fabric suddenly choking at his neck, loosens the bowtie. Rolls up sleeves. Breathe. Yes, breathe. The words, like wooden dominoes, fall flat-faced. Syllable by syllable, tries to replace them with the fluency of crimson but is unsuccessful. Picks up the rose, turns in his hand, puts it back down. Picks it up again and brings it to his nose. Hoping to catch some scent of Husk still lingering.

In his inattentional observation, Alastor finds a red tainting the green stem. Sanguine spectres dancing along a fresh pathway. He’s pricked his finger from the thorns. Sharp and pointed, protrusions from an otherwise smooth blade. 

Inhalation, a cry for oxygen. His legs buckle, ragged body clinging to a handle of mahogany. His skin is red, his mouth red, his eyes, his hair, his clothes, his blood. _Look deeper inside._ His heart the same color as the rest of him, a pinch of stem churning a vermillion volcano. 

A bleeding capillary, does not dam it up. Lets the liquid flow and drip down his fingers. In one hand, he’s holding onto a cabinet door. The other, clutching a rose.

He’s a monster wearing the skin of a monster. _How can Husk not see?_ There is no innocent love behind this want. It’s far more primal, beast-like, twitching hands and disheveled jacket. 

It's like an answer to his boredom. An erupting volcano, burning every capillary, vein, braided arteries. Chooses to burn his hand over this low flame, now alive under his skin. The smell is pleasant, wound as beautiful as a full-grown rose.

The fist clenched around his heart loosens slightly, breathing a gasp of brightness. It tightens again, and he realizes, _this is the pain of love._

But this is love transmuted, past stages of mania. The clench of a delusion. This is vaulting past the edge of unreason, drowning in a waterlogged abyss.

 _Heart, hold hard._

* * *

In the span of your life, there’s much to be avoided: the wicked, the destructive, the beautiful. The things that you want for no reason other than wanting them. 

But want is a strong emotion, it wraps you in its arms, weighing, enticing. Fills your mind with fantasies, a drop of imagination. Let’s look inside, through pale skin and messy angles like stained glass. Past that pensive stare, rose-tinted monocle, and clothing of red leaving a prism.

It’s the feeling of morello cherries in late August. Looking for a lost something. Searches the sky. The yellow of the sun fading to sleep, letting dusk red bleed through. The sun is rounder than what he remembers, beyond black and white, like stained red glass; stolen from a church steeple. He pulls away as if red can lose red. For all Alastor doesn’t know, pulling apart like redshift. He’s never even heard of astrology, but perhaps Husk would know. Another late night question left in a bar.

And imagination runs along with him: stolen night in a tavern, stolen dream in his tower, stolen kiss in a bed. Wants to turn redshift blue, moving ever so closer together. Thinks, _let me wrap myself in your thoughts, keep you warm, whisper words in your ear like honeyed wine._

* * *

When the only remaining power is his phantasia, Alastor closes his eyes to retain the shape of the rose. In all it’s curvature and stained colors, a mirror image. The wound is a fire sinking into itself. Like the sun, brings warmth. The log holds out only for so long before it gives up, collapses into a bed of sand. Heats up to make blown glass, dyes it red with blood. Burns himself over nothing. _I love him,_ he thinks. And has something of shards in his eyes. _It’s madness,_ as shaking fingertips pull back up.

Tucked into the corner of a right angle, you can see the euphoria wear off his body, slipping underneath the tightness of his layers. Caked blood beneath his fingernails, coating a stem, slipped on his tongue.

If Husk were a flower, he would be a rose.

And, Alastor thinks, brilliance isn’t found in the petals. They are the adjunct to a stem as the alcohol is to his words. Take away the drink, the pre-eminence of light, and he would look a stranger. 

There’s still the foundation of experiences: dreams, nightmares, _what is the difference?_ The foundation of a beast, distinct absence of fangs. A rose without the flower. A thought without the words.

It’s the build up to a remark, hiding in the recesses of a mind.

_Your thorns are the best part of you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was for the first day of radiohusk week (prompt: falling in love). though i don't think i'll be able to make enough for the rest haha


End file.
